Article #4
The Cowardice and Cynicism on Display at the
24 September Minnesota Department of Education
Meeting to Present the North Star
Accountability System
At 6:00 PM on Monday,
24 September, in Conference Center B at the Minnesota Department of Education
(MDE), Michael Diedrich and other MDE prevaricators made a big mistake in their
handling of the meeting and for the fraudulent claims made therein.
Their efforts represent
one more hoax inflicted on the K-12 students of Minnesota in the form of their
North Star Accountability System (described in full as you scroll down through
previous recent entries on this blog), now being foisted on the public as the
latest failed proclamation hailing a program that nevertheless has no chance of
raising academic performance of Minnesota students. Minnesota State
Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius and aide Michael Diedrich both know
that they are just putting on a dissembling performance, yet they persist in
inflicting this ruse on the K-12 students of Minnesota, and on of those who
make at least some show of caring, because they must by law make some response
to the dictums of the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Student performance in the
public K-12 systems of Minnesota during the eight years of the Governor Mark
Dayton administration (for which Cassellius has served as academic agent of
destruction) has languished at a wretched level of proficiency. In this
context of defending the indefensible, Cassellius and her inept aides are now
making the rounds in an attempt to sell their ruse to the public.
Cassellius was absent from
the meeting on 24 September. She and Diedrich had the heads up that I
would be calling them on their dissembling antics. Cassellius most likely
stayed away to avoid my tough questions, in cowardice leaving Diedrich to deal
with my abundant knowledge base and thorough mastery of factual detail.
If Cassellius would now claim otherwise, my challenge remains: Meet me in
a refereed debate according to formal rules of disputation. Or remain
cowed in cowardly silence.
When I asked those tough questions,
Diedrich and his even more inept MDE associates tried to make the case that I
was disrupting their meeting. They had glided glibly through an easy
evening until I asked those questions as this charade slipped over the one-hour
point: Diedrich and company had received only perfunctory questions from
the audience of less than 50, full of education establishment types from the
school districts of Minnesota and those at the MDE there to protect their
well-remunerated sinecures. So when I asked if they lived in a fantasy
world or were frankly perpetrating the North Star Accountability System hoax on
the students of Minnesota, they were trapped and they panicked.
Cassellius and her lackeys
should now be on notice: As busy as I am putting the finishing flourishes
to my book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect, I will now be collecting a bevy of factual
information that will fully reveal your ineptitude and your dishonesty. I
will over time reveal your incompetence and prevarication as relentlessly as I
have pursued the truth about the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public
Schools (MPS). And since Superintendent Ed Graff and many top MPS
administrators have actually made many improvements in the administration and
programming of this school district while my investigation has been underway, I
expect the MDE to fare much worse.
Do realize this,
Commissioner Cassellius, Michael Diedrich, and all staff members at the
Minnesota Department of Education: I am now in unswerving pursuit of the
facts pertinent to your pretensions. You have nowhere to hide. You
are trapped:
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